Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2010: 13 bulletins

Microsoft will release 13 security bulletins this Tuesday. Five are rated as " …

According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 13 Security Bulletins addressing 26 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, and it will host a webcast to address customer questions about the bulletins the following day (February 10 at 11:00am PST, if you're interested). Five of the vulnerabilities are rated "Critical," seven are marked as "Important," and the last one is classified as "Moderate." All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least 10 of the 13 patches will require a restart.

If you're wondering, the 17-year-old Windows hole we reported on last month is indeed being plugged next week. As for the Internet Explorer flaw disclosed this week, Microsoft understandably isn't ready to patch it yet. What is worrying, however, is that Redmond says it is still working on a patch for the SMB flaw that can be used crash Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 remotely. That was disclosed three months ago, so the company is lagging quite a bit with that one.

Along with these patches, Microsoft is also planning to release the following on Patch Tuesday:

One or more nonsecurity, high-priority updates on Windows Update (WU) and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)

One or more nonsecurity, high-priority updates on Microsoft Update (MU) and WSUS